Practical Photography

Photography is an incredibly rewarding hobby and it can be much more than that. You can earn money from your images if you are good enough. However, photography is also a really expensive art to get into. Not only are you obliged to spend your hard earned money on lots of items of hardware, you also have to shell out on developing and other associated costs.

You can give yourself a better chance of keeping up with your photography costs by playing online bingo. This might seem like a stretch, but online bingo is a fantastic way to earn a bit of money on the side – money that can go directly into your photography hobby so that you don’t have to spend your wages on it.

Bingo sites such as bet365 bingo are renowned for offering promotions and prizes that are really useful to get your hands on. Extra cash always comes in handy, especially if you have an expensive hobby, and if you can have fun whilst earning your winnings then so much the better.

Keep up to date with all of the bingo news floating around on the internet by visiting ohmybingo.com as often as you possibly can.

When anyone has their picture taken it is human nature to want to try and look your best, weather it is for a family photo or a holiday snap! Here are some easy to follow tips I have picked up from others to ensure you make the most of what you have got!
Make sure you have perfected your perfect smile by practicing lots! It is very important to look relaxed and do not forget to smile with your eyes as well. Striking a pose is just as important as your smile, again practicing in a mirror can help. If your are standing up for the photo, turn your body at a forty five degree angle which will make you look as slim as possible. Placing your hand on your hips, is also a good trick to make your arms look slim and elongates the rest of your body.

Images of Marilyn Monroe previously unseen have been published in a new book “Marilyn: August 1953: The Lost Look Photos”, which becomes available this week.
The images were taken over a period of a week in 1953, when the Hollywood actress had a sprained ankle and was unable to film ‘River of no Return’ with Robert Mitchum in Alberta, Canada.
The photographer John Vachon took over 100 pictures of Marilyn for a feature in Look Magazine, although only three were publishes in October of that year. In one the photos she is pictured posing comically with a stuffed grizzly bear.

Katherine Jenkins regularly updates her fans with what she gets up to throughout her day using Twitter.

However I am sure some people would have been surprised to learn that she posted photographs and “tweeted” during a charity 10K run in Swansea!
Katherine posted photographs of herself and the people she ran with at approximately the half way stage of the race, at the water stop point, at 7K and again crossing the finishing line.

The group were raising money for domestic violence charity Hafan Cymru. To date they have raised £7,000.

American photographer Tom Lowe, who took an amazing image of an ancient tree against the backdrop of the Milky Way has won first prize in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.
The winning shot, named “Blazing Bristlecone” depicts the Milky Way arching over a very old bristlecone pine tree. The tree is believed to be over 4000 years old, possibly one of the oldest living trees in the world.
Mr Lowe beat hundreds of photographers from around the world to win the£1000 prize. His photograph is being displayed, along with winners from different categories in the exhibition of winning photographs at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

An album of family photographs of Cumbrian-born slapstick comedian Stan Laurel will be going under the hammer in Newcastle. Stan was born in Furness, now Cumbria but spent the majority of his life in the North East managing theatres in the area.

The photographs have been put up for sale by his great- niece and are expected to fetch approximately £15,000. The majority of the fifty four lots have not been seen before and one set of seven pictures dates as far back as 1987.They feature Stan Laurel performing a play in his back yard in North Shields with his brother and sister. Other pictures show Stan and Oliver Hardy at various events and on different film sets.

In my last post I wrote about the difficulty of taking photos of animals but
another tricky area of photography is managing to take photographs of babies
and young children. Unless they are asleep, getting a young child to stay still
for a photograph can be as hard as taking a photograph of an animal. I once did
a photo shoot with a Coronation Street celebrity and her 4 month old baby, we
only had the studio for 3 hours so we got a few photos at the start, then she
fed her baby and it fell asleep! Rather than wake the baby up we had to change
the whole dynamic of the photo shoot to accommodate for the fact that the star
of the photo shoot was now a sleep.

Recently my aunt’s golden retriever had 9 puppies and obviously we were desperate to get lots of adorable images of them to keep and show potential owners via a website online but we were faced with the common problem of how to take photos of moving pets. However one way to overcome this is to select the correct shutter speed, the shutter speed should be set to 1/125 for pet photos in order to reduce the chance of capturing just a blur of fur. It is also important that you have a digital camera as this will allow you to snap away as many photos as you need without wasting expensive film, this will also let you look at the photos and assess whether or not you have the desired image.

When getting married one of the most important aspects of the day is the photography. Once all the excitement of the big day is over the wedding photos are the images that will be looked at and displayed in the home for the rest of their lives. Therefore ensuring that you get the images that you want is paramount, even if it does mean an evil photographer who shouts orders at the bridesmaids all day. I think that one of the best ideas that a friend of friend did before her big day was to go for a trial with her chosen photographer. They practiced different posses, different colours, and different lightings so that on the big day the wedding photographer knew exactly what the couple wanted.

Well, it’s that time of year again when everyone will be jetting off on their holidays armed with their cameras in the hope of getting a decent shot of a local monument and iconic building. There are some simple tips that everyone can use when taking holiday snaps. Firstly ensure that you get down to the level of the person or product that you want to photograph. Secondly use a plain background so that the main focus of your shot is not distracted from a colourful or busy background. It is also important that in some circumstances that you use a flash outside as this will ensure that the whole image comes out in the same brightness. Also move in close to your chosen image as this will allow lots of detail to be picked up by your camera that could be missed if you take the shot from far away.